Re: [VOTE]: motion to transform Xerces into a top-level project as a member of the "federation" of XML projects

On 10 May 2004, at 21:11, Neil Graham wrote:

<snip>

>> I consider all the parser
>> implementations as "Xerces", the TLP. They are built, packaged,
>> and shipped separately but I still consider them all the same
>> thing at that level. With that view, Xerces-* are all "Xerces".
>
> And I think it's imperative that we create a charter that recognizes 
> what I
> take to be a crucial fact, which is that Xerces-J and Xerces-C are very
> different code bases with different architectures and committer
> communities, and, to some extent, which have been optimized for 
> differing
> uses.  We need a charter that formalizes our long-standing process 
> that a
> committer on one project is not considered automatically to be a 
> committer
> on the others.

one of the most interesting facts about the social experiment that is 
jakarta commons is that an lot of people thought that it'd never work 
without barriers between components. but the pmc decided to experiment 
with a minimalist approach - there is only one set of commons 
committers who have rights to the whole. the only requirement is that 
before starting to commit to a particular component, a committer must 
add their name to the list of those who are responsible for that 
component.

what's amazing is that the lack of formal restrictions makes everyone 
more conscious of the need to co-exist together as a social community. 
the boundaries between components seem to be are respected (by the 
community) more because they are not formal rules but living social 
conventions. so maybe if the devision is already recognized socially 
(by the C and J communities), there may be no need to actually formally 
specify it (in the charter).

of course, this is just my tuppence :)

- robert